The initial goal of the Data+Climate collaboration is to demonstrate the utility of the diverse knowledge resources that Data Commons is making discoverable and available to researchers seeking to uncover novel solutions to climate and sustainability challenges. Participating researchers at Harvard are collaborating with Data Commons' engineers and researchers to determine what kinds of questions can already be answered using Data Commons’ resources, what kinds need more data or resources, and, also, what queries will not be answerable via a Data Commons approach.

Researchers at Harvard and Google founded their “Data+Climate” collaboration with a handful of pilot projects, selected from amongst Summer 2021 Harvard faculty suggestions. The pilot projects are intended as a small sample of the kind of work that this new collaboration will enable, spanning inter-related questions across design, engineering, economics, health, political science, and the physical sciences.

Click within the image below to visit (evolving) Pilot project descriptions and more.

The v0.1 Pilot projects have been selected to cover a broad range of areas of inquiry and and to:

1--test infrastructure and data utility for research (Projects 0, 1, 2, 3);

2--experiment with modeling using Google Data Commons holdings (Projects 4,5).

The graphic above and listings below also show potential extensions of Projects 1 and 2, beyond a Pilot phase, and lists visualization and (statistical) methods collaborating faculty whose expertise can be tapped during the Pilot phase, and beyond.

Pilot Projects

• Pilot 0: Establish s/w service connections to create new “Search-Analysis-Visualization-Environment (SAVE)” at “save.earth.harvard.edu" and/or“save.earth.google.com"

• Pilot 1: Climate-Smart Public Health in Madagascar Golden and Dominici (HSPH) with Huybers (FAS)

• Pilot 2: Climate Justice Design Fellowships Sanders (HLS) & Desimini (GSD)

• Pilot 3: Study of the Tar Creek Superfund Site (Kirkwood (GSD))

• Pilot 4: Huybers (SEAS) Improved crop production models, with a long-term focus on Africa, informed by real-world data on where/when crops are grown, temperature, and water availability in concert with climate (circulation) models.

• Pilot 5: Samuelson (GSD) Using publicly-available data to identify vulnerable populations (related to climate resiliency) at the building scale, based on combinations of data from housing characteristics like window-to-wall ratio, number of floors, tax records, building data like power consumption, and climate models.

• Links to PI-submitted descriptions of what will become the “Pilot” projects are shown in the menu at this site. Google Docs Pilot Project links point are to be continuously updated by the PIs in order to update the overall plan shown in the graphic above, and this site will update automatically.

Public statements, for reference, on

Google’s commitment

Google’s Third Decade of Climate Action

and on Harvard’s

President Bacow Reviews Harvard Climate Actions

Elevating Climate Issues